William Hyslop Sumner (1780–1861), attorney, military officer, and public official, was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts. He attended Phillips Academy before graduating from Harvard University in 1799. Sumner afterward studied law in Boston and was admitted to the bar in 1802. He represented Boston as a Federalist in the Massachusetts General Court, 1808–19, served as aide-de-camp to Governor Caleb Strong, 1806 and 1813–16, and to Governor John Brooks, 1816–18, and was adjutant general of Massachusetts, 1818–34. During the War of 1812 Sumner was named an agent to assist in the defense of the District of Maine, and in 1826 he sat on a federal board of army and militia officers that met in Washington, D.C., to plan militia organization and cavalry tactics. In 1831 Sumner purchased half of Noddle’s Island. He spent the next two decades promoting its development into the settlement of East Boston, and later wrote A History of East Boston (1858). In 1860 Sumner owned real estate valued at $150,000 and personal property worth $3,000. He died at his home in Jamaica Plain outside Boston (Alonzo H. Quint, “Memoir of William Hyslop Sumner,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings 18 [1880–81]: 282–6; Sumner, Memoir of Increase Sumner [1854], 58–9; Harvard Catalogue description begins Harvard University Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates, 1636–1925, 1925 description ends , 181; Boston Gazette, 12 July 1802; Boston Columbian Centinel, 14 May 1808; DNA: RG 29, CS, Mass., Roxbury, 1840–60; Boston Daily Advertiser, 26 Oct. 1861).

On this day Sumner also sent James Madison the enclosed printed letter to John Adams of 3 May 1823, with a nearly identical covering letter (Madison, Papers description begins William T. Hutchinson, Robert A. Rutland, John C. A. Stagg, and others, eds., The Papers of James Madison, 1962– , 43 vols.: Congress. Ser., 17 vols.: Pres. Ser., 11 vols.: Retirement Ser., 3 vols.: Sec. of State Ser., 12 vols. description ends , Retirement Ser., 3:68).